This will be awesome...but do we really think it will sell over 5 million copies? This is predicting over 70% of the people who bought WoW will buy the expansion. Does anyone have statistics on the normal rates of expansion adoption?
An interesting point: Someone pointed out to me the other day that only 15% of people who play WOW ever make it to Molten Core (a 40-man end-game raid). Far less people make it to Naxx (maybe <5%? <3%?), the current end-game content. If so few people make it this far into the game, how many people can actually make use of what the WOW:BC expansion offers?
If they don't even raid now, what good is a set of new, and harder, 25-man raids going to do for them? Most players never get enough gold to purchase an epic mount (around 900 gold). How many players will be able to purchase the new flying mount (4,000 gold)?
In light of this, WOW:BC is priced to sell 4.85 million units. This means about 70% of everyone who has bought WoW will buy the expansion, even though we know many of these people no longer play AND for those who do still play, few will actually be able to venture forth to explore this higher level content. Does this make sense?
I remember people in my guild dropping out of WoW when the Xbox 360 came out. A similar situation may occur with people getting a Wii...and PS3 if they can get their hands on one. I know there were people delaying purchase of next-gen consoles because they thought they woud be playing BC in November. They may just get the next-gen consoles this holiday if there's no BC to play.
Ouch! I guess the rumors were true about a potential delay. Now they will miss the big holiday season. I wonder how big an impact that will make for the expansion. A lot of people may move on to the new consoles if they get those instead.
At 501.71 DKP a share, this seems somewhat overvalued. World of Warcraft has sold 7 million copies? I think many of those people have already quit. Predicting over 5 million copies for the expansion seems a little aggressive.
I don't know why this game has a higher price than Halo3. Halo 3 will be the definining game of this upcoming Holiday season.
So let's all mosey on over to the Halo 3 section and buy some shares.
The new additions to the talent trees of each class should renew the game by allowing players to play their old characters with new specializations. For example, Blizzard's changes to the Shaman's Enhancement and Elemental trees should add more synergy with other players in the raid.
9